Uninsured individuals and families have one more week to purchase plans in the federal health care marketplace until enrollment closes March 31.

The Oct. 1 rollout was one of the first significant tests of the Affordable Care Act, with healthcare.gov glitches initially causing delays. But the United States Department of Health & Human Services reports 5 million people have signed up so far.

By Jan. 1, everyone must have “minimum essential coverage” under an employer, individual or government plan or face annual penalties that increase each year until 2016, according to the Texas Association of Health Underwriters.

The federal marketplace is one option for Texans. It offers “Qualified Health Plans” that fall in line with metallic coverage levels -- bronze, silver, gold and platinum -- that match percentage of costs covered, according to healthcare.gov.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas offers some of those plans, which are available to Texans in all 254 counties, said Dan McCoy, vice president chief medical officer.

“Our goal was to create affordable opportunities for everyone in Texas,” McCoy said.

A fourth of Texans lack health insurance, said Dick Snyder, a local health care navigator for Project Amistad.

“Anything we can do to help with that number, the better,” Synder said. “We can’t pick a plan. We’re not here promoting insurance. It’s not socialized medicine; it’s private insurance.”

But the Affordable Care Act is still drawing criticism from lawmakers, health care underwriters and policy organizations.

The National Center for Policy Analysis, a Dallas-based thinktank, reported several unintended consequences of the law, including increasing prices, disruptive subsidies and over-providing to the healthy and under-providing to the sick.

“A weakly enforced individual mandate will give people perverse incentives to game the system -- remaining uninsured while healthy and obtaining insurance only after they get sick; choosing limited-benefit plans while healthy and scaling up to richer plans after they get sick,” said NCPA President John Goodman in 2010.